Living with Benedict XVI the Last Hour, Seventh Day of the Christmas Octave, December 31, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Mass for December 31
St. Francis Retreat House, Monticello, New York
Retreat for the Priests of the Capuchin Friars of the Renewal
December 31, 2022
1 Jn 2:18-21, Ps 96, Jn 1:1-18

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• “Children, it is the last hour.” Those words of St. John in the first reading today are a fitting starting point for our reflections as the civil year 2022 draws to its close and we mourn together the death of Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI. St. John goes on to describe the “many antichrists” who have appeared. The antichrist is not the devil, but, as St. John says later in his first epistle, anyone who denies the mystery of Christmas that we continue to celebrate, anyone who denies that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. During St. John’s time, there were many Docetists and Gnostics who because they believed that all matter was evil denied that God could have ever taken on human flesh. But today there are other types of antichrists, who even though theoretically they may have no problem with the incarnation, live as if God hadn’t taken on our humanity to make us sharers in his divinity. For us to have lived 2022 as a year of the Lord and for us to prepare to live 2023 in this way we must live it together with Christ, the Word Made Flesh who has entered our world, continues to dwell among us in the Holy Eucharist, has promised to remain with us always until the end of time, and desires to be our full-time Savior, Lord, King, Shepherd and Friend. Many times practicing Catholics can behave as practicing antichrists through most of their day, week and year, denying that Jesus wants to come to them in the flesh of their work and study, their sufferings and joys, their Mondays through Saturdays, their TV rooms and bedrooms, indeed that he wants to come to be God-with-them in all aspects of their life. That’s the essence of the spiritual cancer of secularism, which — despite the fact that we believe in God — gets us to live as if God doesn’t exist, as if he hasn’t become one of us, as if he doesn’t want to accompany us, love us, and help us each moment.
• That’s the proper context for us to consider how to live this “last hour” of the last day of the year leading to the “last hour” of the year that’s about to begin. It’s meant to be a year of the Lord, a year lived together with him. How can we best mark this day?  I think the phrase from St. John’s Prologue today is very helpful: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” The past year has been a year of many graces, graces upon which God wants to build in the upcoming year. Yes, there have been sins — our own sins and the sins of so many in the Church and world; we can think about what’s happening in Ukraine, the attacks on pregnancy help centers and push for state referenda on abortion in our country, and various scandals in the Church, to name just a few —  but as St. Paul reminds us, “Where sin abounds, grace superabounds” (Rom 5:20). God’s grace has been greater than all and every sinful disgrace. For us to cooperate in what God wants to do in us in the new “year of the Lord” that is about to begin, it’s important for us to look back, therefore, and see the graces he’s given us in 2022, in 2021, in 2020 and beyond as the foundation for what he hopes to do this year.
• One of the most important spiritual practices of the saints and serious Christians is a nightly general examination of conscience. For many years I have done it in the way taught by Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, who was beatified by Pope Francis in 2014. He taught that in the daily general examination, we examine God’s presence over the course of the day in our lives, our awareness of his presence, and our cooperation with him, leading to three expressions: first, thank you for all the graces of the day; second, sorry for the times we were oblivious to his presence or did exactly the opposite of what he wanted; and help me more tomorrow to live in union with Him. The same practice can be used to our spiritual profit at the end of a year, so that the graces of the past year may be built upon or even recuperated, so that we can live this “last hour” as a grace building upon what’s come before and serving as a building block for what God still intends.
• First, we need to thank God for all the graces of the past year, the grace of his presence with us, the grace of all the times he fed us with himself in the Holy Eucharist, the grace of so many prayers heard, the grace of his holy word to guide us, the grace of so many times he has washed us in his mercy. We’ve all had the grace of the people he has put into our lives who have walked with us throughout the year, who were there when we needed someone, who were perhaps born into our family during the last year. We can thank the Lord for all the men who have responded to God’s grace and become new postulants, who have become novices, who have made professions. We thank him for the difficulties of the last year, whether with our health, with our family members, with our apostolates or work, which have been occasions for us to grow in dependence on God. Our receptivity to the graces that God has planned to give us in 2023 is somewhat dependent on our recognizing how lavishly he has blessed us in 2022. It’s somewhat dependent on our coming to him, like the grateful leper, to say thanks, so that he might give us the even greater “graces upon graces” he has in store. There’s a certain fittingness to the fact that in the Romance languages, like Blessed Alvaro’s Spanish, the word for graces and the word for “thank you” are the same: gracias. To say thanks is to recognize a grace. This is our first response to God at the last hour at the end of the year, to say thanks, which is why the Church lifts up a Te Deum on December 31 each year, because God-with-us has been with us as the greatest grace of all, blessing us, feeding us, teaching us, forgiving us, calling us anew and sending us forth.
• Second, like in our daily examination, we need to express deep contrition for the graces wasted, resisted or rejected over the course of the last year. We’ve all squandered some of the precious gift of time, filling some of our days with vanities and inanities rather than with God. As the ancient Roman sage Seneca once said, “It is not that we have so little time, but that we have wasted so much of it.” Rather than seizing the day, we have often let days and weeks just drift by. St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus about time, giving them advice that has not lost any relevance in 2000 years: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men (and women) but as wise making the most of the time” (Eph 5:15). But beyond asking God for mercy for the times that we have not made the most of the time he has given us, we can also turn to the other sins of commission and omission of the past year and say “perdon!” God wants these sins through his mercy to become “happy faults” for us, he wants to transform them from disgraces into graces, so that he can build upon them grace upon grace in the upcoming year. And this is not just personal but ecclesial. We need to do reparation for the sins committed by all, to turn to God and say, “Forgive us our sins” and “Deliver us from the Evil One.”
• The third moment, however, is one of hope. As we look ahead, we count on the Lord’s help as we make the profession that we need that help. We can’t fix ourselves, our world and the Church by ourselves alone. But God in his goodness always wants to give his help. The more we take the honest assessment of our life, the more we can make “spiritual new year’s resolutions” and ask God for the graces to persevere in keeping them. As we make new year’s resolutions in many areas of our life, knowing that some of our resolutions to get better will span many years, it’s key for us to focus on this divine assistance given through the essentials of the Christian life: how to grow in prayer, receiving God’s gift of himself to us and offering ourselves in response; increasing our knowledge of the Word of God and living by it; entering more deeply into the prayer of the Mass; growing in docility to the Holy Spirit in our day-to-day choices; preparing ourselves to receive God’s mercy more frequently and with greater contrition; sacrificing ourselves more for others; counting our blessings more and more rather than obsessing about what we lack; and so on. God wants to give us his help to build on the graces he’s given us in the past and we thank him in advance for his lavish generosity that he has been prepared to shower upon us in 2023 since before the foundation of the world. This is the means by which we are to able to dwell with the Word-made-flesh dwelling among us, the one who was in the beginning with God and is God, to structure our existence not as a practical anti-Christ but as a Christian!
• Every December 31, from 2005 through 2012, Pope Benedict led a Te Deum service in St. Peter’s Basilica to thank the Lord for the graces of the previous year and to implore graces for the one upcoming. As we mourn his passing just over four hours ago, at 9:34 am in the Vatican, we can finish with a few of the counsels the Holy Spirit inspired him to give to us that take on greater relief now after his death.
• In 2011, he said, “Another year is drawing to a close, as we await the start of a new one: with some trepidation, with our perennial desires and expectations. Reflecting on our life experience, we are continually astonished by how ultimately short and ephemeral life is. So we often find ourselves asking: what meaning can we give to our days? What meaning, in particular, can we give to the days of toil and grief? This is a question that permeates history, indeed it runs through the heart of every generation and every individual. But there is an answer: it is written on the face of a Child who was born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, and is today the Living One, risen for ever from the dead. From within the fabric of humanity, rent asunder by so much injustice, wickedness and violence, there bursts forth in an unforeseen way the joyful and liberating novelty of Christ our Savior, who leads us to contemplate the goodness and tenderness of God through the mystery of his Incarnation and Birth. The everlasting God has entered our history and he remains present in a unique way in the person of Jesus, his incarnate Son, our Savior, who came down to earth to renew humanity radically and to free us from sin and death, to raise us to the dignity of God’s children. Christmas not only recalls the historical fulfilment of this truth that concerns us directly, but in a mysterious and real way, gives it to us afresh.”
• In 2012, he stated, “Dear friends, on the last evening of the year that is coming to its end and on the threshold of the new one, let us praise the Lord! Let us express to ‘the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come’ (Rev 1:8), repentance and the request for forgiveness for our shortcomings, as well as sincere gratitude for the innumerable benefits granted to us by the divine Good. In particular, let us thank him for the grace and truth that have come to us through Jesus Christ. In him lies the fullness of all human time. In him lies the future of every human being. In him will be brought about the fulfilment of the hopes of the Church and of the world.”
• And in 2008, he spoke about what he called in his encyclical Spe Salvi he termed the “great hope,” which is the profound eschatological trust that sustained him throughout the continuous “last hour” of his earthly life and was the source of his being blessed with “grace upon grace.” He said, “Our great hope as believers is eternal life in communion with Christ and the whole family of God. This great hope gives us the strength to face and to overcome the difficulties of life in this world. … God never abandons us if we entrust ourselves to him and follow his teachings. Therefore, while we take our leave of [one year] and prepare to welcome [the next], let us present to Mary our expectations and hopes, as well as our fears and the difficulties that dwell in our hearts, with filial affection and trust. She, the Virgin Mother, offers us the Child who lies in the manger as our sure hope. Full of trust, we shall then be able to sing at the end of the Te Deum: “In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum – In you, Lord, is our hope: and we shall never hope in vain”. Yes, Lord, in you we hope, today and forever; you are our hope. Amen!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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